Konstantin Kovshenin

Related External Links

Thank you for using Related External Links.

Description

My second WordPress plugin. Special task from a WordPress Plugins Ideas entry by bluebird2. So I’d like to present some sketches on this.

  • Easy to install
  • Up to five external links per post
  • Widget appears in your sidebar only on single pages and those who have related external links

Screenshots

Download, changelog and other notes

Download link, changelog and other notes. Officially hosted in the WordPress.org Plugin Directory: Related External Links. I also like when people with WordPress.org accounts vote it up ;) thanks!

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46 comments

  • Great idea! I will talked on my blog!
    However, it is a pity not can be used with a code or shorttag, it may be more appropriate.
    All the world does not provide the information in the sidebar :)

    • Hey thanks mate. Yeah, this is version 1.0b, it's just a start-off and the request was getting external links in your sidebar. Anyways, your idea sounds cool to me so I guess I'll have an option for short-tag support in the future version so hang in there. Thanks for the idea! Cheers!

  • Thank you!
    You really made me happy. Today I accidentally found the plugin on WP site, and to my surprize I found out that it is based my idea! :-)

    I am sure the plugin works fine on most sites, but I have still a small problem when I use it: since I have a bilingual site in English and Persian (still in beta-testing,) my issue is not a common case. My site uses "qTranlste" to show all pages and posts in two languages. Consequently, every post has titles in two languages. Your plugin shows both titles next to each other.
    Fortunately there is a solution to this, which is mentioned here:
    http://www.qianqin.de/qtranslate/forum/viewtopic….
    Is there any possibility to change the codes so it can be used by bilingual sites as well?

    • Hi bluebird2, you're welcome! Yeah, of course. Stay tuned for the next release! The shorttag feature's comin' up too! Thanks!

    • For the related external links to work with qtranslate for the title part of the link you need to replace the 'two' occurrences of
      around lines 241 and 248
      <pre lang="php">$desc = get_post_meta($post_id, "related_exlink_$i"."_desc", true);</pre>
      with
      <pre lang="php">$desc = __(get_post_meta($post_id, "related_exlink_$i"."_desc", true));</pre>

      also you could replace for seo purposes
      <pre lang="php">$out .= "$desc
      ";</pre>
      with nofollow and target blank

      sorry for jumping in, hope it saved you some work
      br
      George

    • Hey George, thanks, good idea. I'll just throw that into the widget configuration. Stay tuned for the next version.

  • Hi there. Thanks so much for putting this together. The problem I'm having is that the fields in the post are there and I'm able to add the links, but the display code is not being added too the sidebar and I'm not sure why. Can you please send or post the code that is supposed to be in the sidebar? Thanks!!!

    • Adam, are you sure you didn't forget to add the Related External Links widget to your sidebar? Browse to the Appearance – Widgets section in your WordPress admin panel.

  • Same issue here. I installed the plug-in and it appears in my widgets list in the Admin panel. I add the widget and it then appears in the Current Widgets list in the Admin panel, but then the widget does not appear on the actual web page. Additionally, there are no edit options for the widget, only title. I'm using the veryplaintxt theme. Any idea what's up?

    • Jon, the widget appears only in single posts. It won't appear on your homepage. Look inside a post. The widget doesn't require any configuration. The configuration is in your 'edit post' screen. If you have any further problems please provide me with a link, it will help a lot.

  • Having problems with the widget showing on every single post, even if there is no links, you can see one of the sites that I am using it on here http://taidedesign.com/en/takashi-murakami/ this post is showing the problem…. Any help greatly appreciated, if you don't have time to resolve this, or suggestions what could be causing this, does ot happen to anybody else?
    Thanks George

    • Hey George, good point. Didn't think about not having related links. I'll fix it in the next update. Thanks for the feedback.

  • I edited my version of the plugin 1.0.1 (haven't updated to the latest one) to make the widget not show if there is no links…
    changed just after

    <code>Related external links start –></code>
    from
    <code>if ($out) { echo $before_widget;</code>
    to
    <code>if ($link) { echo $before_widget;</code>

    Now the widget does not appear if there are no links…

    Would have liked to done it in a cleaner way when you have the if (is_single()), but didn't want to completely rewrite the whole thing.. Have a nice weekend

  • and make it work on pages aswell, now that we have taken it off everypage if you follow me
    if (is_single())
    to
    if (is_single() || is_page())

    did you get the last code for the hover?

  • Thanks for a fantastic plugin Konstantin! Just one question – I don't want it in the sidebar so how do I get it to display right below the post?

  • This is exactly what I'm looking for but i need it to work for pages as well as posts.

    Can this be added in please?

  • Is it possible to have a different list of links for each page?
    Page A gets related link list A,
    Page B gets related link list B, etc.?
    My client will want to update the lists, so this is very close to what I need.
    Thanks.

  • I am looking to add this to my sidebar

    what is the php code to display the related posts from within a page

  • Thanks for the great plugin, but I found a bug with strict HTML:
    The command in line 115 & 127 run always, so there are blank -tags. In HTML strict they are illegal, so I have add this statements in the code:
    at line 116: $set = false;
    inside the if: $set = true;
    and after line 127: if (!$set) $out = null;
    with this 3 lines the plugin creates HTML strict code

    Greetings

    Phil

Konstantin Kovshenin